[Linux-aus] Grant Application: Promotion of FOSS in undergraduate Computer Science, Information Technology and Software Engineering degrees at the University of Newcastle

[Mark Wallis]

Hi James

Thanks for your feedback !

> On 3 Apr 2017, at 2:07 pm, James Polley <jamezpolley at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> * Are the current course materials accessible to me (as a non-UoN student) online? I ask this for two reasons; one is that if they are, I’d like to take a look at them to get more of an idea of what materials would be produced by this grant. But secondly, I ask because I’ve often found that publicly accessible course materials and procedures from universities, once they get indexed by search engines, become helpful to a much wider range of people than the students they’re aimed at. I’m wondering if the new materials produced here would be publicly readable even if they can’t be copied; and I’m using the accessibility of the current materials as a proxy for that question.

I’m afraid not. UoN does not currently promote a policy of making their course material publicly available. As for the content I propose to release under a CC license, I intend to host that content outside of the standard UoN course tools and then link students to it. For example, we may upload the videos we record to YouTube, and then just link students to that content. That way - we ensure the material is publicly available.

> * Are you aware of any similar research that has already been done along the lines of your proposed Project Review/Success survey? I’m taking it for granted that you the method you have proposed (focus group, review material, short questionnaire) is sound; I’m specifically wondering if you’re aware of anyone who has already attempted something similar to this process and has obtained similar data.

We have based this approach on our existing course review processes. Courses taught at UoN always go through student review process at the end of the semester where we ask the students to complete a short questionnaire that gives them the opportunity to provide us feedback on how we can improve the course content. I intend to essentially re-use that process to have students who have previously completed the courses provide feedback on how much better they thought the course would be if the updated/new content existed. That’s the plan anyway - I’ll admit that this may alter as the grant progresses as we may need to go through the UoN Ethics committee if we wish to collect such data and publish it. 

Regards,
Mark.
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Dr. Mark Wallis (Associate Lecturer)
 
School of Electrical Engineering and Computing
Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment
The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, 2308, NSW
AUSTRALIA
 
Webpage:
https://www.newcastle.edu.au/profile/mark-wallis